


The Devil Rules

by priestessamy



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Analysis, Evil, God - Freeform, Good, Non-fic, Other, Philosophy, Queer Themes, Religion, Theology, the Devil - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6995809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/priestessamy/pseuds/priestessamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not a fic, but hopefully folks will still appreciate this.  As few of us as there are.  I wanted to talk about all the stuff in the game and I don't really have a decent place to collect all my thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

The purpose of this study is to examine what happens when I attempt to write an intellectual paper when not bogged down by things like ethics and 'having to use a library' and other silly bullshit.

Nah, I'm just fucking with you.

So. Let's talk _We Know The Devil_ (hereto referred to as _WKTD_ because that's less letters and therefore objectively easier for my lazy ass). It is generously and confusingly placed in the “Group Relationship Horror Visual novel” genre. That is technically true, but convoluted.

But the much more accurate description from the website states _WKTD_ “is a story about everyone who made you cry at summer camp. It’s about missing your Sailor Moon VHS tapes. It’s about how being irresponsible is contagious. It’s about knowing that in a group of three, two of you will be closer than the other. And it’s about being weird and queer and wrong and hoping against hope no one will find out when the actual, literal devil comes for you.”

Ah, now that's more like it. Exactly the kind of vague bullshit that will draw me in, like a gay moth to a blue flame produced by a skull lantern.

If I want to really get into the nitty-gritty of this story, I should probably start from the beginning. Thankfully, visual novels are a little easier to analyze since they're mostly text with some images and music.

Plot then. Obviously, massive spoiler alert from here on out. I'm gonna be talking about a lot of stuff. If this sounds like the kind of game you want to play, please for the love of god support it. Because it's awesome and it will make you cry. And then come back here and continue reading. I'll be here~

Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune are outcasts at a Christian camp for bad kids. It's their final week and all they can hope for is that they don't have to go to the fabled cabin where the Devil may or may not appear. Of course, that's exactly what they have to do, and they have to somehow keep themselves safe and entertained for 12 hours. Summer Scouts is something of a magical girl camp that teaches troubled youth how to defeat monsters. But dealing with the Devil is another problem altogether.

They spend most of the time fixing old-timey magical crystal radios, playing classic games like truth or dare and seven minutes in heaven, and drinking irresponsibly. There's a lot of very meaningful conversation and a lot of secrets – some hidden, some revealed, some merely hinted at.

As things get more ominous and spooky-scary, the kids decide to contact god via radio (it's as oblique as it sounds). They're given a quick report from the voice of god who “sounds like every boy you are afraid of[,] talking at once,” telling them that the Devil is already there.

Naturally, the Devil **does** show up. Depending on choices that the player has made, one of the three main characters will be possessed, transforming into a nightmare creature, and the other two must join forces to exorcise them. Technically, all the endings are relatively happy. No one dies, two of the three characters have grown closer, yadda yadda. But they are unsatisfying conclusions.

As is often the case with the visual novel style, this is due in part to the existence of a 'true ending'. But to discuss that, I need to back up slightly and talk more about our main characters.

Jupiter is a tomboy who is hesitantly awesome. She's smart and athletic, but her deep-seated self-esteem issues prevent her from ever being number 1. She's gay but terrified of ever saying such a thing out loud because, historically, words have great power if spoken. Jupiter is obsessed with touch and balance, and when possessed, she becomes engulfed with hands: “a hand for every kind of touch; that hand is for hitting, that hand is for petting, that hand is for grabbing, that hand is for holding. We feel the pull on our skin and recoil. They want so many things from us; maybe everything.” Like her namesakes, both divine and planetary, Jupiter is associated with storms.

Neptune is a bitch, but the kind of girl who is a gentle, loving bitch to her friends. She's not afraid to point out when Jupiter and Venus are acting strangely, but she does so in a way that says she wants to help them be better people. Conversely, despite acting like she's better than everyone, she never wants to be put on a pedestal or have her good qualities highlighted. She prefers being an awful person. When possessed, this manifests quite literally as she becomes covered in bile after she spends the entire day coughing suspiciously. Not surprisingly, she's associated with water.

Venus is an effeminate boy, and is commonly agreed by many to be an “egg,” or a trans girl who does not yet understand herself enough. He does his best to keep himself small and unharassed. He's not like other boys and he prefers it that way. If forced to choose, he would rather be physically hurt before he has to deal with an awkward situation or face the truth. Once possessed, Venus' pronouns change to “she” and she grows wings and eyes all over her body. They are associated with light.

So surely in the true ending, god shows up, right?

No. What do you think this is? No.

When our protagonists try to contact god on the radio, they get the Devil instead. And the Devil's voice is beautiful, bidding them to join, to come back home. Perhaps not surprising at this point, the Devil has a slightly inconsistent gender.

Each character takes this invitation at different strides. Jupiter is ready to go into it headlong. Venus is tempering his excitement, but recognizes the unmistakable draw. Jupiter is as terrified as she is enchanted. Against most common narratives, they convince one another that if they are to be the Devil, then that is how it shall be.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the game does it for me, so to hell with it. _They know the Devil, because it's them._

I think this is about the most basic breakdown of the game I can do without taking another thousand words to talk about each sentence individually. That's what the rest of this examination is for.

Let me know what you think! Theoretically there will be much more to come!

 


	2. Thorny, Thorny Representation

I'm not interested in partaking in a boring, stale argument, so let's get this out of the way.

Video games are a new art form, not even half a century old, which on the art timeline is like... baby-town frolicks. But still, lots of people seem to want video games to be considered art, and well they should be. And if games are art, then they must be held to certain standards.

The disagreement seems to be centered around exactly what those standards are. And while this particular battle is waged in multiple discourses, it seems the most volatile when it comes to electronic entertainment with the widdly buttons and the joysticks and stuff. Because it's a new millennium, dammit.

So, I'll be clear. Games, and frankly every single kind of art and media, don't do enough to give proper representation for queer people – particularly positive and normalized young queer people as main characters. You can count on both hands, and maybe a few toes, the number of actual decently-written and fleshed-out queer characters, and that's if you're being generous about the fact that you can't even play as half of them.

In _WKTD_ , you play as three characters, at once, like some kind of glorious hivemind. Whenever the game's narration comes up, it's always first-person plural. We did this, we did that. Why else would you be here, it seems to say, if you weren't one of us? A bad kid, a queer kid, an outsider. Who else would be interested in playing this kind of game?

But the reason that I love this game, more than any other game, when it comes to the scare-word that is representation is that it does not normalize queerness. It argues that it's better. It glorifies it. And nobody does that. When Shepard hooks up with Liara, it's just like “Oh, cool, this would be exactly the same if you were a man.” When Ellie kisses Riley, it doesn't suddenly make The Last of Us a pro-gay game, it just means that Ellie kissed a girl. The waitress in Catherine being trans and kinda cool doesn't actually make a difference, it's just... kinda cool (especially since I don't remember her character's name off the top of my head (Apparently it's Erica??)).

But when Venus is possessed for the first time, and her pronouns changed, it was accompanied by this sense of wonder. She was shining and brilliant and a little scary but also warm and comforting. I've watched multiple Let's Plays on YouTube where the person playing gets choked up during the route when Jupiter and Neptune play seven minutes in heaven because it's so honest and accurate. It's sexual, but not sexualized, which is a very important distinction to make.

It can also be argued that the 'playstyle' (such as it is) also emphasizes something of a polyamorous appreciation too. After all, it's not incorrect to call it a relationship visual novel, and the “True Ending” requires making choices that involve the three characters stick together. Even without this emphasis on the group, there's a lot of flirtation among all three characters that manages to feel relatively natural.

Compare this to the Bonfire Captain (a figure who probably deserves an entire section to talk about properly), who has apparently left camp after condemning our protagonists to the cabin, to go home with his girlfriend. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it is kinda gross, and the characters aren't afraid to point this out. This is precisely the kind of thing that many people are afraid of, after having done it to it to queer kids for ages. And this is one of very, very, very few examples where the narrative is flipped, particularly in a video game.

I'm okay with actually being told I'm superior, for once. Because _WKTD_ makes absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that religion has a very tense relationship with LGBTQ folk. Exceptions can be named, but for the most part, Christianity and bigotry are rather fated to be conceptually linked for a while. While entire communities tell queer people that loving who they wish and doing what they want and drastically changing their bodies is wrong, here we have a game who says it is the only natural path to take.

The truth is that until representation is the norm, it's not good enough. We want support, we require glorification, we need love.

 


	3. Preamble to Everything Else (The God Stuff)

Time to talk about religion, kids!

Well, let me soften the blow at least somewhat and say that we're going to be talking about religion in the broadest sense.

After all, our main characters are named after Roman gods, and that's not an arbitrary detail. Jupiter is the most widely liked of the three, and also the unenthusiastic leader mostly by merit of the fact that neither Neptune nor Venus want to lead. Neptune, like her namesake, is the most tempestuous, though she hides it underneath a cool veneer of not giving a shit.

Venus naturally has the most pointed name, not to mention the fact that they're represented in decisions by ♀ - a character addressed with male pronouns but associated with a symbol of femininity. It's quite common to play _WKTD_ and feel as confused about Venus' gender as the character does. He spends the entire game talking about feeling out of place and not understanding boys. He takes it as a compliment that he's different, and when the Devil possesses her and her pronouns change, we have a simultaneous 'ah-hah moment'!

Curiously, Jupiter and Neptune also have what might be called reverse genders, and stranger still are divine siblings. Whether this is an intentional, incestuous scandal or just a way to drive home their natural connection, I honestly can't say. But it's damn fascinating.

_WKTD_ also has an incredibly fascinating relationship with the world of the occult. First, there's the tiniest bit of lore in Neptune's screen name as she texts her friend during the intro – RestingWitchFace. It's not always explicit what the girls are doing at summer Scouts, but it seems reasonable to assume she's become fascinated with witchcraft (possibly to the terror of her parents, hence, she's sent to a camp for bad kids).

But the hole in my theory is that... Summer Scouts is kind of magical-mystical. Like, it would be one thing if it was just a place to train Christian Magical Girls to fight the Devil. Fine, I can get down with that. And it would make sense that they aren't allowed to have magical transformation sequences, because those are _verboten_ or whatever, because only _those other_ magical girls transform to battle evil (and oh hey, our protagonists get transformation sequences when the Devil shows up).

Yet the camp is still filled with radios that are obviously not just radios. They're old-school not-exactly-steam-punk devices powered by crystals that can connect with divine beings. They're weapons that channel your inner essence (storm, water, light, etc.). They're charms, wards, tools, basically anything you need them to be. In contemporary Christian culture, such a tool would be considered heresy. Hell, non-Catholics don't even like the idea of prayer beads or lofty garbs.

Speaking of witches and magical girls, spoiler alert for Madoka Magica. There is a really cool connection, no doubt intentional, that at one point Madoka and Homura actually discuss the possibility of becoming ulta-powerful monsters in order to end their needless suffering, just as Neptune and Venus seem particularly keen to join/become the Devil because it's better than the bullshit they have to deal with in their lives.

I'm gonna cut this section here because the religion stuff is where I was really excited to dig in, and it's getting to be a lot of text. So get hyped~!

 


	4. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

Okay.

So.

Christianity.

At one point I thought I might be a pastor – hell, I still might. I have a masters of theology. _We Know The Devil_ is inherently important to me. I'm fascinated by everything it has to say about morality, belief, practices, god, the Devil, everything.

Unfortunately, that means I need to get my nerd on and drop some history first.

Constantine did a good thing by making Christianity legal. Then he had to go fuck up a perfectly fine situation by making it a national religion, putting Christianity on the course to awfulness. What had begun as a small religion hiding from those in power, often in one another's homes, doing their best to take care of widows and orphans, had morphed into something with sinister under – and over - tones. Popes, money, inquisitions, crusades, you know how it goes.

Obviously I'm simplifying a lot. But hopefully the point stands, as religion gains a hold in the midst of a power structure, it can no longer necessarily function as a religion should. Too much emphasis becomes placed on buildings and committees and funding and way way way too much bullshit. They weren't as worried about honest belief or helping the sick or being, well, Christ-like.

In many ways modern Christianity is even worse. The churches somehow manage to be more lavish than cathedrals, the leaders more corrupt, the followers less concerned with doing their duty than simply looking like good Christians. It produces a world in which dedication to particular moral imperative stops us from legitimately questioning what is really right or wrong.

And that is the world that our three characters find themselves in. Strip away the magic and the literal devil and it's eerily similar. Neptune, Jupiter, and Venus are good kids at the end of the day, and there's absolutely nothing about them that needs fixing by some creepy fundamentalist camp. Venus is sweet, Neptune cares deeply about her friends, Jupiter is brave and affectionate. The sins they've been convinced they have are products of their environment, not themselves.

What I'm saying is that the conflict here is way more pervasive than it initially seems. Strictly Christian morality has to be present in the girls' families to make them think it would be a good idea to send them to the camp in the first place. The bonfire captain is allowed to go sleep with his girlfriend and that's gross but okay. But Jupiter and Neptune touching one another is somehow evil.

The subtext is made text when god speaks “like every boy you are afraid of talking at once.”

Venus he accuses of arrogance, of vanity, of knowing better than god, for wishing to be that which she is not. God even evokes “Venus 5:23,” likely a reference to the Letter to the Ephesians: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” That's fucked up, god. Why you gotta play a trans gal like that??

Poor Neptune gets a serious talking-to from the man upstairs. As they tune in to his ravings, they hear “...extract the resulting ink. Place in a vial and explain it to the worthlessness of the treasures of the earth. Break it against a mirror, the cause of vanity.” The thing is, that's precisely what Neptune is **not**. She's pretty, but she hates it. The vial has already been told how worthless it is, the mirror is already broken. She has been told for ages that she's a slut, even though we have no clue how much or how little sex she's ever had. She is cursed by god with beauty and then blamed for it.

Jupiter meanwhile has apparently committed the cardinal sin of wanting to touch and to be touched. This seems insanely petty until you remember just how tough Christians are on sex and sexuality. But even more damning is that god calls touch a “language of power.” It's not a language of intimacy or of connection, but power? In a stricter society, it can... kinda make sense. The one who does the touching has power over those they touch. The hand that takes is inherently the powerful one. But this interpretation leaves no room for mutual expression, hence why it only _seems_ powerful, because its view is so narrow.

God is a dick, basically.

And it doesn't exactly get any better from there. God is kind enough to warn those listening in that it is certain the Devil will show up. But then he also goes and quotes a non-existent proverb (i.e. he just made the goddamn thing up) that “The devil is only the shadow of man cast from the light of god,” that there is no actual devil.

Well, okay, but then an hour later the Devil super **does** show up. And in the true ending, the Devil is the one on the radio! So what the fuck, god?

What's awkward is that we have a Christianity as we don't know it, with magical girls and all. But what we do see is the god of the Christianity as we **do** know it. _WKTD_ is all about how god looks when you're anyone, inside or outside, who doesn't feel so blessed or holy. And that's its real strength. It's not just an outsider's opinion from a harsh, angry atheist perspective. The game's creators know theology, they know their Bible, and they are righteously upset.

And that brings us to the Devil and the End. Next time~

 


	5. To Reign in Hell

So I'm not very good at guessing plot twists and surprises and stuff. If I had gone into _WKTD_ knowing more, maybe the whole “the Devil probably isn't so bad” thing wouldn't have caught me off-guard. But for three endings I was still ultimately under the impression that the true ending was all about keeping my babies safe and not letting anything bad happen to them.

Though I guess that _is_ what happened anyway.

We don't actually get a ton of screen time with the Devil, but it's more than enough. Oh, and because of beautiful Venus, I'm sticking with she/her pronouns for the Devil because Venus is important.

It's vital to me that first we talk about what kind of Devil we're dealing with here, because it all ends up making way too much sense. Though often referenced as a part of the Holy Choir when she was an angel (possibly the leader, obviously of high status) it would be more useful to understand Satan as a lawyer. Occasionally, she comes to humans or even to God and proposes alternate understandings of reality in order to test them.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve seem to have little to no trouble ignoring the tree they're not supposed to touch. So Satan tempts Even, and she goes for it, and then she tempts Adam. This seems shitty unless you consider the Good Omens school of understanding demonic acts as part of god's plan, usually shortened as “ineffable”.

Likewise, in the book of Job, Satan is basically the one who says god's followers aren't shit because they are given nice stuff. God tortures Job for a few chapters, Job remains faithful, and the Devil takes her leave. Hardly evil, but maybe a little dickish.

Another notable encounter includes the Devil tempting none other than Jesus with power and fame. This goes as well as you'd expect, but can definitely be interpreted through this same lens, recognizing that for all we know, god asked her to come to Jesus and tempt him to ensure that the whole “son of god” thing was sticking properly.

There's a real Paradise Lost theme here, which is probably very much on purpose since it's basically the main source people go to when they want to paint the Devil as a relatable protagonist. With that, you have your Greek hero, brought low (literally) by their pride.

But when it comes to the game itself, let's just look at what little we have to work with, the lady herself.

“Oh, darling... I miss you. I have always missed you. I can still remember what your faces are like. I have missed them since before you were born. Please come back. I know I can't offer much. The bodies I can give you are weak. The stories I tell are impossible. My world is even more precarious than this one. But please come back. It hurts to see you like this so much. So unhappy in those bodies of yours. Stricken by those stories. Forced to live in a so much pain. I can't even come save you. But I can promise one thing. There is room for three in my world. And only two in his.”

I'm biased, but this doesn't read as malicious. Tempting, yes, since that's kind of the Devil's bag. But it's also honest, pleading, concerned, loving. Even more curious, that apparently she's powerless. She knows god is stronger than her, but she also has reason to believe Jupiter, Neptune, and Venus are exactly the kind of kids that don't mind it. The Devil was the original bad kid, the one who made a fuss in heaven and got kicked out for it. So all bad kids who came after her belong to her.

Everything here goes back to Christian language about god, and I think that's why it's so important to me.

Our heroes are the prodigals, gone and in the arms of another, but welcome to come home any time at all. The apostle Paul often talked about the heavenly bodies that believers would receive when they die. It's said that god knows us before we are created, perhaps the same is true of the Devil. It's noted many times that the Bible is full of miraculous stories. The Devil has her own world and powers, but god is arguably stronger. Yet god is distant now, talking only through a radio, content to issue angry demands to those who listen. His leaders are awful people who might do bad things with the youth in their care (or at least ditch camp to go fuck their girlfriends).

The last line is the most damning. The very mechanics of the game force us to choose at every interval who will be able to stick together and who is left out. Every time, we invariably decide who becomes the unloved in a group of unlovables. According to the bonfire captain, this is the way it is. When there are three friends, someone is going to be the annoying one who doesn't get to do anything and will get into big trouble.

But the Devil says no, just like she always says no. From the very beginning, it has been her job to say no. And while this seems villainous to anyone who loves being in god's company, it's important for anyone that doesn't like it so much. It's a blessing to every bad kid who has ever lived.

So when you aim for the true ending, you learn to say no as well. You even out your decisions so that no one is left behind – or more accurately, so that everyone experiences exclusion. That way, everyone knows communion and pain when the ending finally comes. They're all linked, and the Devil feels comfortable making a push for something new and different. Now she can christen an entire squad of girls to do what she can't.

And even though it's a battle to get there, they agree to stick together, because they refuse to stay as they were any more. And they refuse to be alone.

Venus, Neptune, and Jupiter's transformation together is a thing of beauty. They're not monsters, they're beautiful. They're patient and they touch and hold each other with care. Like always, it's not actually the Devil's doing, they have done this for themselves. They do what Madoka and Homura couldn't. They're “the three worst girls since Eve”.

I left off the coda of the ending, so let's also deal with that for a moment. Because that's where it really becomes something altogether new. Our protagonists don't just stay in hell and enjoy their new-found freedom. They come back to camp and take over. Wonderfully, it's not a hostile one either, or at least it's not described as such. There is a fight, but no one is killed. One by one they help transform other campers, teaching them to be who they really are. Group south is way nicer. “Love shines through, in the end... We have a new apple.”

The Devil has crafted a new Eden, one that is somehow more beautiful than the original.

And that's where I got hung up for a while. People can (and indeed have done, bless their hearts) take issue with the ending. You can still read all of this as a bad thing. After all, the Devil takes over some poor kids and turns them into monsters who start to conquer the earth or whatever. I get it, it feels bad. But let's return to the Good Omens “ineffable” thing, and pretty much everything I've said up til now.

A scenario: God fucked up somewhere down the line. What started as a pretty good thing has been, over many many many centuries, turned into garbage. I don't really need to repeat myself, I went over that in section four. You can probably write your own list.

But it's not just obvious immorality being painted as the only morality. The advent of religious literalism alongside the increase in scientific understanding has ensured the epic downfall of the church in many areas. Pastors have to take on second jobs because they can't live otherwise. Church buildings are burned down and turned into incense for camps like the Summer Scouts. People don't listen anymore, until finally god gets bored, takes up a radio station and just starts spouting nonsense of the airwaves in case maybe something good comes from it.

God is bored and calls up an old friend. Someone who knows how to turn bad kids into _really_ bad kids who love the world too much. She's had a lot of names and genders over the years, and she is way too excited about this idea. They start making plans. They can't influence anyone major, they can't change the world, but three kids can do a lot of damage.

I'll leave my thoughts with this one last curious tidbit.

God's signal is 109.8 FM. That's not a radio station anywhere in the midwest. That's not a radio station anywhere in the US.

However, that IS a reference to the Bible, the book of Psalms.

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”

Maybe just me, but it kinda sounds like god is sick of his job and he's trying to go out in a blaze of glory with one last big middle finger to the world. And who would be more supportive of that than his old friend, the Devil.

 


	6. What if Satan Was One of Us?

Alright, so it's been a minute. But there was one last subject I've been seriously needing to talk about.

There's still a bit of a confusion in my own thesis, and I'm fully aware of that fact. Have our heroines become the Devil? Or are they now god? I would argue both. The game has already made a fine point for the former (I mean, it's there in the name). But how in the world can they somehow be both? Well, let's give it a go.

So all of the obvious details exist in the last few paragraphs of the true ending. The three worst girls since Eve, the new Eden, the new apple, all of that. But it's a tenuous connection that doesn't really mean much in the long term.

What really makes me think that the girls have become the new god is the fact that they form a trinity. Now, I mean, yeah, the number three shows up a lot in the Bible and pretty much everywhere else. If the fact that there's three of them was all I had to go on would I be wasting your time?

Probably, but that's beside the point.

Apologies in advance but I have to break out my master's degree again and discuss the math of god. Despite being kind of trivial to much of the rest of the world, the exact composition of god's parts is kind of a huge deal to Christians. This isn't made any easier by the fact that it's kinda completely bonkers. It was essentially decided a long time ago (but not 2000 years a long time ago, more like 1600 years a long time ago) that god had three parts – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. But rather than saying that they are divided equally, each part is a full aspect of god. So at a straightforward assessment, god is composed of... 300%? Well, that's strange.

Let's make it stranger! There was an even larger argument about whether Jesus was 50/50 human-divine, or whether he was simultaneously completely human and divine. This was an argument that held such vast implications that Saint Nicholas (THAT St. Nick) attacked someone at the Council of Nicaea. If Jesus were not both completely human and completely god, then the sacrifice he made on the cross would have been meaningless. The more specific reasons for this are too many and too complicated to discuss in this goofy interwebz essay. I'm just trying to give you a decent idea of how this shit works, so that we can properly turn it on its head. According to common Christian theology, that means that the trinity puts god at 400% GODLINESS. That's a lot.

God the Father is your almighty, all-powerful Beard In The Sky who looks down on everything you do and judges you. This is the creator who formed the world and the miracle maker that drowned the Egyptians who were trying to capture Moses and the Chosen People. God the Son is your typical, run of the mill, Jesus-thingy. Came to earth, lived a life, got super-murdered, saves our souls, yadda yadda. The Spirit is the part I'm most fascinated by, perhaps because it's often the most neglected. The Spirit is what allows “your sons and daughters [to] prophesy, your old men [to] dream dreams, your young men [to] see visions.” It's what breathed life into the dry bones down in the valley, and it appeared as a dove when Jesus was baptized.

Now the obvious starting point is Jupiter as the Father (this will feel awkward, let's just all push through it and carry on together, I promise it will be fine). Aside from being the main Roman god, there is her unofficial status as leader. But while god created the world and was more than happy to declare himself GOD, Jupiter is hesitant about so much as taking leadership on a sports team. She is, in fact, the ideal person to have in charge specifically because she doesn't want the job, but she'll give it her best (at least now that she's learned to get over her self-esteem issues). She may not be a miracle-worker, but what she can do is perform small miracles – a hug for your loneliness, a hand to hold, to pet your hair, to carry a burden. Jupiter is furious that the rules of goodness changed without her consent. Once upon a time, you just had to do good things, which she felt was reasonable and achievable. But then it became a matter of the heart, something immeasurable and frightening, and she was no longer comfortable with these rules. As the Father of the new trinity, Jupiter is the perfect figure to correct rules dealing with salvation.

Neptune takes the form of the Son, though the reasons for this may not seem particularly obvious at first. After all, her ascended form is that of a bile-covered witch, and she's often the most brash and harsh of the three. But consider one of her most consistent qualities across the entire game. When her friends try too hard to be 'good' she gets the urge to drag them down. Ultimately she rages at them because they're so good and it drives her crazy that they never see it. Neptune doesn't actually care about being moral or looking good or the common concepts of “goodness”. She knows goodness when she sees it, and she hates the idea that you have to appeal to some arbitrary standard set by people who don't even know you. And the key thing about Neptune, the reason she's covered in bile, is because she can take it. She can handle the hatred and the “wicked” thoughts of the world, and in return she can give water, an entire flood of water. And I don't think it's entirely coincidental that Jesus is most commonly associated with water – baptism, water into wine, walking on water, bleeding water when pierced on the cross, you get the idea. Again, like Jupiter, the difference is that she is a physical being who is not only being sacrificed one time, but willing to take on the bile of the world every day. The healing blessings she offers are not casually won from a single time in the distant past, but in the present, constantly.

Not to repeat myself, but the Spirit is definitely the most fascinating part of the trinity for me. And apparently this is common for both queer people and people of color. It's something like the underdog of the trinity, and it has the most varied aspects at that. Like Venus, the Spirit is associated with issues of gender, breath, eyes, flight, and more. Venus can see things, lights, that the other characters cannot. She is often soft-spoken and concerned more with emotional trauma than physical harm. While she doesn't often get upset, when she does, it has a level of righteous fury that the other two don't display. The Spirit is often associated with the Hebrew word “ruach” which can sometimes be translated as either breath or wind. And when Venus is ascending, she says “I want feathers in my lungs and eyes on my skin. I want my heart to see and my lungs to fly.” With her new body, Venus can easily whisk from place to place, to inspire the downtrodden, to give hope to the hopeless, and to see those who hate being invisible. She can breathe air back into exhausted lungs.

And herein lies the difficulty in creating these connections. Because the game is obviously about discovering yourself and accepting who you are, and how that is far less straightforward than we might hope. In becoming the new trinity that takes over the camp and changes the world, they are neither holy nor demonic. They theoretically have the blessing of both god and the Devil. Like any of us, the only thing that our girls can do is be the absolute best versions of themselves that they can be. They will do that which they consider good to help and heal those around them.

Ultimately, it's probably safe to say that all this isn't about killing god or becoming the Devil. It's about breaking out beyond simple binaries and realizing that nothing is ever that simple. You actually **can** have two friends. You **can** hate someone and still do nice things for them. You can be queer and still be a Christian. You can be a pothead that volunteers at homeless shelters.

And when shit sucks the hardest, the best thing we can do is band together and _hail Satan_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone pointed out to me that it says in Genesis that 3, it says that eating the apple at Eden makes one "a god" (depending on translations). And that made me think more things. Here, a post-script.
> 
> OKAY SO
> 
> The original apple (or… technically just fruit, I guess. Whatever, it’s all symbolism anyway) was all about wishing to be like god, to declare that we are capable of knowing the difference between good and evil
> 
> This is actually super important, because a lot of people in various theistic communities seem to take this literally, that we would have absolutely zero morals if it weren’t for god. But from a combination of sociology and psychology, we know quite explicitly that the reason morals exist is because they help to make society function better and benefit everyone.
> 
> More to the point, we can see CLEARLY and WITHOUT ANY DOUBT that Venus, Neptune, and Jupiter already know what’s right and wrong. The problem emerges from the fact that what they know to be good and bad is different from the morality they are given.
> 
> The new apple, the sin that they eat, the sin the Devil wants us to commit, is self-acceptance. And boy, doesn’t that sound like a mind-fuck? But again, the creators of the game know what they’re doing. Anyone who’s been a part of Christian culture knows that there is a huge emphasis on controlling yourself, the idea being that we are ‘sinful’ by our very nature, and so we must deny our natures and therefore achieve some measure of moral living.
> 
> But the entire point of WKTD is that being your full, true self is anything but shameful. By accepting herself, her gender, her emotions, Venus becomes breathtakingly beautiful and gentle as a lamb. Once Neptune stops coughing up the bile and lets it overtake her, she is able to purify those around her. Once Jupiter stops restraining herself, she is given the ability to touch all those around her.
> 
> Basically, what’s the point of living in a world where you can’t do the one thing that comes most naturally, being yourself??


End file.
